Mobile, remotely controlled robots are often equipped with new technologies and engineered to carry out some missions in a more autonomous manner.
iRobot, Inc. (Burlington, Mass.) and the Boston University Photonics Center (Boston, Mass.), for example, demonstrated a robot equipped with sensors that detect a gunshot. The robot head, upon detection of a shot, swiveled and aimed two clusters of bright-white LEDs at the source of the shot. See “Anti-Sniper/Sniper Detection/Gunfire Detection System at a Glance”, by David Crane, defensereview.com, 2005, incorporated herein by this reference. See also U.S. Pat. Nos. and Published Patent Applications Nos. 5,241,518; 7,121,142; 6,999,881; 5,586,086; 7,139,222; 6,847,587; 5,917,775; 4,514,621; and 2006/0149541, all of which incorporated herein by this reference.
The assignee hereof has devised a robot with a weapon which can be fired by the operator controlling the weapon. See, e.g., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/543,427 entitled “Safe And Arm System For A Robot”, filed on Oct. 5, 2006, incorporated by reference herein. The following co-pending patent applications by the assignee of the applicants hereof are hereby incorporated by this reference: U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/316,311, filed Dec. 11, 2008; 11/543,427 filed Oct. 5, 2006; 11/732, 875 filed Apr. 5, 2007; 11/787,845 filed Apr. 18, 2007; and 12/004,173 filed Dec. 19, 2007.
The inventors have discovered that its robots, when deployed in hostile environments, are often fired upon. Therefore, it is insufficient for the robot to merely detect a gunshot or other sound. Instead, the robot must be capable of detecting a gunshot, targeting the origin of the gunshot, maneuvering, and maintaining the targeted origin as the robot moves. Requiring an operator controlling the robot to maintain the target origin while maneuvering the robot significantly increases the workload requirements of the operator.